Around the world, journalists are resisting the regimes that would jail and kill them

‘We should fete the bravery of journalists such as Rana Ayyub, who stand tall in the face of relentless attacks from Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP.’ Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

Should we be celebrating press freedom at all today? Last year a record number of journalists were jailed worldwide. Five out of every six of us live in a country where press freedom has declined over the past five years; some 400 journalists have been killed in the same time frame. Vladimir Putin has crushed the last vestiges of independent journalism inside Russia. And from India to the Philippines to the UK, there’s been a sharp rise in coordinated, misogynist attacks against female journalists.

There seem few causes for celebration, then. And yet this year, I’m daring to believe there’ll be some cautious reasons for hope.